Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008. afrinic-8

1. Converged
Communication
and IPv6
John Loughney
© 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

2. The Mobile Internet is here
Global Mobile Internet Usage and Access
2 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

3. Mobile Communication is booming in Africa
• According to Total Telecom, "The number of mobile phone
users in Africa exceeded 280 million in the first quarter of
this year and will reach the 300 million mark in June,
according to Wireless Intelligence.
• As a result, the continent has surpassed North America in
terms of mobile subscriber numbers, with the U.S. and
Canada together having 277 million users.
• Mobile subscription growth stood at 39 percent annually in
Africa between 2005 to 2007. (ITU Report)
3 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

4. Growth in Africa & Middle East Mobile
Search Users (m), by Type of Search, 2008
– 2013
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Growth in Africa & Middle East Mobile Search Users (m),
by Type of Search, 2008 – 2013
Web Search 11 19 30 50 82 138
Local Search 8 13 22 37 59 92
On Portal 41 56 73 94 118 144
Off Portal 19 26 39 59 89 130
On Device 2 3 5 7 13 23
Juniper Research, “Mobile Search & Discovery Opportunities & Markets 2008-2013” March 2008
4 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

5. So what, you might ask
• More than 3 billion cellular phone users at the end of 2007
• A growing number are IP capable
• Trend toward “always-on” applications
• Push Email, VoIP, IM, multimedia services
• Currently, many operators need to run both a circuit switched and an IP
network. This leads to higher CAPEX and OPEX.
• In the future, services will migrate to IP.
• So the choice is between
• IPv4 with NAT frequent keep-alive messages.
• This is only the choice during the transition phase.
• IPv6 and long lived connections
• Eventually, there will be enough IPv6 only devices in other networks that
there is little choice but deploying IPv6 or face obsolescence.
5 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

6. Geoff Huston’s predictions
• Projections as of June 3rd 2009:
• (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html):
• Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 02-Dec-
2011 (Red)
• Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 20-Jan-
2011 (Green)
6 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

7. IPv4 has a finite lifetime
• The previous slide’s projections are based on past history, so all bets are off
once scarcity starts.
• Expect that the exhaustion event will occur before the end of this decade.
• The impact of exhaustion and trading will affect everyone that gets address
space from a provider.
• A rough ROI calculation for IPv6 deployment based on the IPv4 alternative
being $5-10 per day times the number of devices times the number of
employees.
• For more info see
• http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/
• http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_8-
3/ipj_8-3.pdf
7 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

8. NATs with keep alive messages
• IPv4 Mobile Devices are usually behind IPv4 NATs
• Always on application are becoming more prevalent
• Push Email, VoIP, IM, etc.
• Applications that want to be reachable need to send periodic
keep-alive messages to keep NAT state active
• Current NATs require Keep-Alive from 40 seconds to 5 minutes
• Need to implement for minimum ( ~30 seconds)
• Sending of NAT periodic keep-alive messages decreases
mobile device standby time by several days
• Not a problem for devices with power cords, but for mobile
devices it is a big problem.
• Additionally, this causes additional infrastructure to be built.
8 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

9. Not All NATs are
created equal
• UDP and TCP timeouts vary widely, a default 30 seconds may be needed for UDP.
• Several different NAT traversal mechanisms are needed
• STUN, TURN, ICE, Teredo
• All bring additional terminal and network complexity
• Additional CAPEX and OPEX
• All NAT traversal mechanism do open some security holes.
• Even worse, you might be behind different NATs at different times of the day
• Home, office, hotspot networks often use different types of NATs.
• Each requiring a different traversal mechanism
• Performance over 3G is even worse
• UMTS radio state management prevents the mobile device from entering sleep
mode, often reducing standby time by days.
• http://www.niksula.hut.fi/~peronen/publications/haverinen_siren_eronen_vtc2007.pdf
9 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

10. What is Nokia Doing About This?
• Nokia has 3 major operating systems in use
• Symbian is used for the S60 user interface
• The Nokia Embedded OS is found on S40 terminals
• Linux is supported on Nokia Internet Tablets.
• IPv6 is well supported over different radios:
• 802.11 bg are supported in phones.
• GSM, EDGE, WCDMA, HSPDA (which is 3.5G - up to 3.6 mps downlink),
• Wimax will be supported in 2008.
• Application support
• SIP is supported, as well as VoIP.
• SIP/SIMPLE is now available. NAT traversal is supported via STUN.
• IMS-based applications support IPv6 such as VideoSharing and Push-to-talk.
• S60 Browser, S60 Email, S60 Media Player, Helix multimedia engine and mobile VPN support IPv6
• Roaming is supported for VoIP, phones can select VoIP over WiFi when WiFi is available
• Several flavors of Enterprise VoIP are supported, as well as 3rd party add-ons for Skype, MSN.
• VoIP support works with Gizmo Project and other services using standard SIP backend.
• In theory, IPv6 should work, but I haven't tested against all the different back-end servers.
• Transition mechanisms are currently not supported, but the major reason has been that no one has
seriously asked for any to be supported.
• Most operators are taking a proxy-like approach for IPv6 deployment
10 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

11. IPv6 Open Issues in Mobile Networks
• Originally, 3G mobile connections were IPv4 only or IPv6 only.
• What is the fall-back logic to IPv4 if IPv6 PDP context opening fails.
• Third party API support for IPv6 is an open issue.
• Mobile operators want to deploy IPv6 for specific services initially.
• This simplifies the network and also device configuration.
IPv4
Connectivity IPv6 Cloud
HLR DNS
http Browsing
GW F
server W GGS
SGSN RAN Terminal
N
IMS
11 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

12. Conclusions
• IPv4 addresses will run out, but there are going to be some dynamic issues
which affect this.
• Operator testing has mainly concentrated on IPv4 side while IPv6 code has had
lower priority
----- > “turn IPv6 on” for a commercial service and start using it might be
problematic from all sides.
• Windows Vista is quickly enabling IPv6 usage globally, so it is just a matter of
time when this opportunity is widely used at least for some applications
• Existing mobile operators are likely to be almost the last ones facing the
address exhaustion problem (perhaps with some exceptions) – so operator
requirements should not be the last result.
• Public IPv4 addresses may be needed for transition, so earlier usage of IPv6
can help.
12 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

13. Take-away thoughts
• I want my device to help me to
communication, but I cannot communicate
with an IP address or if my battery is dead.
• Convergence means taking disparate or
fragmentary elements and integrating them
into a new a new whole.
• IPv6 is the only scalable technology to enable
multiple services, interconnecting with other
networks.
• The Internet and mobiles are booming in
Africa, but to gain further deployment, the total
cost of ownership and usage needs to be as
low as possible.
13 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008

14. List of Nokia phones supporting IPv6
• http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/matrix_s40_3ed_1.html
• http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/matrix_s40_5ed_1.html
• http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/matrix_s60_3ed_1.html
• http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/matrix_s80_1.html
14 © 2008 Nokia Converged Communication and IPv6 John Loughney 4 June 2008